This week, Kansas City—nicknamed the “Paris of the Plains”—was at the center of the evolving and occasionally awkward intersection between traditional American sports culture and soccer’s global reality.

One by one, beaming young men took the Convention Center stage Thursday afternoon, accepted their team scarf and shook hands with MLS commissioner Don Garber. They were first-round draft picks, the lucky few who realized the childhood dream of millions.

In other major American pro sports, first-rounders are expected to be future stars, immediate contributors or, at minimum, players with reasonably productive careers.

In MLS, most just hope to make the team.

“It’s an interesting (draft) class. I think there’s a level of quality that we haven’t seen in the past,” former MLS G.M. and National Soccer Hall of Famer Alexi Lalas said on ESPN. “That will translate into some consistent players as opposed to actual stars.”

And that’s the verdict on the highly-regarded 2012 class. Where do the “actual stars” come from? In increasing numbers, they’re being groomed by MLS clubs in their own youth academies or signed from leagues abroad.

No sport has a global player pool like soccer. In addition, because MLS is measured in part by how its teams fare against foreign opponents, there’s pressure to develop talent in the manner preferred across the globe. That means young players benefit most by training in a professional environment, not by playing four-month seasons on college campuses.

An MLS SuperDraft preview in The Wall Street Journal was headlined, “The Most Meaningless Draft in Sports.”

That might be true, but it certainly doesn’t mean the SuperDraft is meaningless. Yet. Because of clubs’ limited budgets and the nascent nature of the academies, draftees still fill out a significant chunk of MLS rosters. And there certainly are plenty of diamonds in the rough.

Among MLS' Best XI last season, four players were selected during a SuperDraft and one, Chris Wondolowski, was found in the ’05 supplemental draft. That ratio holds true for most recent all-league teams.

U.S. national team fixtures like Clint Dempsey (eighth overall in ’04), Carlos Bocanegra (fourth in 2000), Michael Bradley (36th in ’04) and Jozy Altidore (17th in ’06) were SuperDraft selections, proving that good players can come from just about anywhere. The ‘11 league MVP, Dwayne De Rosario, was signed as a free agent from the minor-league Richmond Kickers. Runners-up Brad Davis and Brek Shea were SuperDraft picks.

Over time, MLS coaches and executives expect those successes to be fewer and further between.

Most MLS draft picks remain anonymous. Andrew Wenger, the Duke utility man selected first by the Montreal Impact on Thursday, has the odds stacked against him in a manner that would shock his counterparts in other sports. Only two No. 1-overall MLS SuperDraft picks in the past decade, Alecko Eskandarian and Maurice Edu, have enjoyed notable success.

“What’s going to end up happening is that the MLS level is going to continue to get better, with more and more finances available to go and get international players,” FC Dallas coach Schellas Hyndman, who previously coached at SMU, told Sporting News. "American players will continue to go to college, but the thing that will affect the draft is that a lot of the guys down the road will be already homegrown and locked in (to an MLS club).

“You’re going to start a little deeper into the college player pool because the better ones are already going to be homegrown."

D.C. United G.M. Dave Kasper, who counts homegrown stars Bill Hamid and Andy Najar on his roster as well as draft gems like Perry Kitchen and Chris Pontius, said, “there’s still a very good talent pool coming out of the college system. The homegrown player initiative is still relatively young. Once that matures, it remains to be seen what the talent pool will be, but we’re going to start seeing kids (from MLS academies) who are more prepared because they’ve had a better foundation and a better curriculum.”

So whither the SuperDraft?

It’s something MLS surely would like to keep on its calendar. Held in conjunction with the annual National Soccer Coaches Association of America convention, it’s an event that brings all those associated with the league together and one that garners a good bit of publicity, even if it’s the variety found in The Wall Street Journal.

“If we’re going to start diluting the college draft because players are now coming through the homegrown player system, what are ways that we can continue to make it a meaningful an important event,” MLS executive vice president Todd Durbin asked. “I think what you’re going to see is, college soccer is always going to be important. There’s always going to be a need for the draft. But I do see a situation where we begin to layer in more and more international players through that process as a way of continuing to seed the league with up-and-coming young players.”

The early returns on that initiative aren’t great. Of the four selected last year, only Toronto FC’s Joao Plata has proven indispensable. None were taken Thursday.

In ’04, the SuperDraft consisted of six rounds. Thursday’s contained only two, with four more pushed to a conference call scheduled for next Tuesday. The players selected that day won’t receive a scarf, won’t have their picture taken with the commissioner and won’t shake any hands. They’ll also be far less likely to thrive as an MLS player than ever before.

“MLS has done a very good job of bringing together a good level of talent,” Lalas said. “There’s not going to be stars, but you can go in and be quality players. Not all players are going to be homegrown going forward, so that’s important. The draw of college and the draw of an education is always going to be important.”

So the SuperDraft will linger on, partly because it’s a visible league event and partly because it’s a familiar American sports ritual. And occasionally, a late bloomer like Dempsey will come along to justify all the effort. But as MLS grows as a league and as the U.S. grows as a soccer country, the SuperDraft will seem far less so with each passing year.